game industry » DarrellHardy.com

The Gods and Kickstarters of GenCon 2012

When I looked up, GenCon was over. “You should go,” said the custodian, prodding me gently with his broom. “And take your dice with you.”

Okay, it wasn’t quite that dramatic. But GenCon 2012 was such a whirlwind of gaming, playtesting, and meeting up with old friends that it’s left me feeling like the Best Four Days in Gaming (as they call it) actually had about 30 or 40 hours packed into each day.

I spent most of my time at the show running playtests of the new Anointed roleplaying game that I’m writing for Dark Skull Studios. (It’s a bronze-age fantasy game in which the player characters are tribal heroes, blessed of the gods, in a world where humans are the newest, weakest kids on the block.)

I wasn’t sure what to expect of the playtests. I’ve run RPGs at conventions before. It’s been my experience that each session is a coin flip: the players and the adventure might sync up to provide an transcendent moment of gaming nirvana, but it’s just as likely to be a flaming train wreck ending in bitter tears of game master anguish.

I ran the adventure six times, with six different groups of players. And every session was awesome. It was a blast to see how different groups handled the adventure. Some were brutally efficient killing machines. Others tried to minimize the bloodshed, and talk their way through as best they could. Most importantly, they all provided valuable feedback, and I’ll be making changes to the game based on their suggestions.

My other job at GenCon was to help promote Dark Skull Studios’ newest product, the turn-based New Gods of Raanon strategy video game. I designed the game (currently in super-secret alpha on Facebook) and we’ve got a Kickstarter campaign underway to help give it the love it needs from programmers and animators to take it to the next level.

Check out the link. Dark Skull is a small indie studio. It’s no Zynga, Kabam, or Kixeye, who sneeze cash (and stock options, in Zynga’s case), and they can use your help to make New Gods of Raanon all it can be.

Demanding Madness

It’s been a while since I’ve done any shameless self-promotion here. That’s not due to any new-found shame in self-promotion, I assure you, but rather a general lack of items to promote. (Not that I’m not working on stuff, it’s just that most of it’s still under wraps.)

One item that has emerged, wet and blinking, from beneath the wraps of secrecy, is The Silver Tablet, a new adventure I designed for Fantasy Flight’s Cthulhu-themed Mansions of Madness horror boardgame. Here’s part of what I wrote about it for FFG’s website:

One of the things I love most about Mansions of Madness is how the clues and dangers of a single story can be combined in different ways to create entirely new adventures every time you play. (Yes, there are screams from the cellar, but are those the screams of a monster’s victims–like last time–or the final syllables of a summoning ritual performed in an alien language?) When given the opportunity to write a new story for Mansions of Madness, this was the aspect of the game I grabbed onto. I enjoyed the challenge of developing multiple adventures all with the same setup, whose differences were slowly revealed–like the horrible secrets of a Lovecraft story–over the course of play.

You can read the rest of my designer notes here, where you can also order a copy for yourself and six or seven of your closest friends. (See? Still shameless in my self-promotion.)

Think of the Children!

A lot of ink has been spilled, both virtual and physical, over the recent Supreme Court ruling on video games. Specifically, the court overturned the California law that would make it illegal to sell violent video games to minors. That ink has been spilled by better writers than I, but I’d like to take this chance to drop a few more dribbles for readers who don’t keep up with such news. (Waves to the family.)

I’ve seen a couple headlines on this story that suggested the Court has no problem with kids playing overly-violent video games, or that it’s wrong to try and control what kids play. That’s not the case.

What the Supreme Court said with its ruling is that video games get the same First Amendment protections enjoyed by books and films. The government (in this, the state of California) can’t arbitrarily decided that this media is its own category, some misbegotten half-breed consumer product that needs to be regulated like tobacco or alcohol.

It said, in essence, that video games are art.

Not all art is suitable for children. Some art will offend. But it’s all protected as free speech.

Sorry, Californian parents. You can’t count on the government and Walmart clerks to do your job for you. It’s up to you to monitor what your kids are playing and — this is hard, I know — tell them “no” when you don’t approve.

Here’s a handy guide: Every video game has a rating on its packaging, from E (for everyone, the gaming equivalent to a “G” movie) to AO (adults only, same as “X,” and no, they don’t make many of these). Look at the ratings on the games in your house. Do you want your kids playing that? If not, don’t let them.

I’m not being snarky, by the way. I’m serious. As both a parent and guy who makes games, it’s important to me that parents be part of their kids’ entertainment choices.

Are you the parents of a gamer? What are you thoughts?

Time Enough for Fun

I made the comment on Facebook that, for a guy without a job, I sure haven’t been playing much World of Warcraft.

That was three weeks ago. I still haven’t loaded the WoW client. I simply don’t have the time.

I’m not complaining. Far from it. I consider myself blessed to have enough colleagues, contacts, and creativity to keep me too busy with paying work to have any time left over for grinding my way through Azeroth. And yet…

On a certain professional level, I should be playing more games (video and otherwise). I’m seriously considering setting aside 30 minutes a day to simply play. But if playing games is just another bullet on my eternal to-do list, will it still be fun? Or does it become drudgery, such that while I’m playing through Portal 2, I’ll be thinking, “Man, I wish I was outside pulling weeds.”

Guess we’ll find out. I’ll let you know.

A Few of my Favorite Things

Remember the old days of the Internet? When you could drop a bulleted list of links onto a shocking pale and naked page of HTML and call it a website? Boy, those were the dark ages, weren’t they? But they did have one thing going for them: when you went to, say, “CoolCars.com” you knew you’d find enough car site links to virtually choke a virtual cow. (Remember virtual cows? Boy, we were easily amused in those days.)

As you might have guessed, today’s post is little more than a list of links. But your virtual cows are safe; the list is all about quality, not quantity, and of a fairly limited scope. So without further ado:

Darrell’s Recommended Game Design Links

What Games Are is the website of Tadhg Kelly, a game designer who’s writing a book by the same name. He updates once or twice a week with insightful essays on video game design and development. It’s a bit high-brow at times, but always accessible, and he’s got a knack for proclaiming business heresies like “Embrace your Pirates!” and “Forget the Money!” and then backing them up with solid reasoning. You might not always agree with him, but he’ll always give you something worth thinking about.
Flark Design is the website of Mike Birkhead, a senior game designer who’s sharing the lessons he’s learned about game design over the years. Again, it’s mostly video games, but a lot of principles apply to tabletop games as well. Mike presents a more “from the trenches” view than Tadhg, and emphasizes the practical over the theoretical, but gives theory its due when relevant.
AltDevBlogADay is the communal blog of a bunch of video game developers (designers, engineers, and artists) writing about their respective crafts. I’ll warn you: especially with the engineers on here, it sometimes gets very technical. But if it’s too much for my little writer brain to handle, I can always come back the next day for a taste of something new.

I’m always on the lookout for game design websites and blogs. Yes, Gamasutra. But what else is out there? Any good suggestions, people?

In Defense of the Niche

“Go big or go home” is great when you’re Donald Trump, rich enough to hire people to grow their hair for your toupee. If you “go big” and lose it all, you just drain one of your money-baths and try it again. But for those who have to grow our own hair and fill our tubs with water, not every swing has to be for the fences.

Success Scales

Success is often a matter of scale. For instance, if I have to pay for ten employees’ salaries, office rent, and weekly visits from Glommo the Clown, I might need my game to bring in $100,000 a month to consider it a success.

“Turbo Monkey Smasher Online only cleared $50,000 last month,” I may wail in despair. “We’re ruined!” (Though if I were working alone in my basement, $50k would be an epic win.)

It’s not uncommon to see movies and games making millions of dollars, and yet still be considered flops. They cost so much to produce, they need to bring in a crazy amount of money to succeed. They need to swing for the fences; anything less than a home run is a failure.

In order to bring in that crazy money, games are often made for the broadest market possible. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not the only way to work.

Thinking Narrow, Not Small

Rather than aiming for the broadest market, it can sometimes be more efficient to aim for a narrower target, and deliver a more specific experience. I’m not advocating a lower quality product, but a more limited one.

For instance, if I’m making a game that simulates driving a big rig truck, I will focus on the simulation aspects, rather a GTA-style open world with hundreds of NPCs with voice-over dialog. I’m aiming at a small target audience (those interested in truck-driving sims), so I focus on what’s important to that audience.

Other (existing) niches are historical strategy wargames, which eschew high-end graphics for historical accuracy and vicious AIs — since that’s what the audience cares about. Or for a larger example, look at EVE Online. It found its niche (economic space sim) and made that sucker its own. While other MMOs have come and gone, EVE is still growing. It’s a niche market, but since they’re the best in that niche, players attracted to that sort of thing are very loyal once they start playing.

Not Just Indies

“Sure, that’s good for indies working out of their basements,” you might say. “But I’m running a massive studio with vast overhead. I got no room for niches.”

You’re probably right. If you’re investing a ton of resources into a single game, you have to do everything you can to ensure the highest rate of return — and that includes avoiding niches. You could make the world’s finest game about being a sewer rat being eaten by mimes but with such a small niche, you’ll never make your money back.

But…

If you haven’t invested the resources yet, I’d suggesting considering not just one, but multiple niches. Rather that investing a million dollars into a single game, invest a quarter of that into four “nichier” games. Each one has a smaller investment, but has the potential for long-term income. The scale of success is smaller, and you can deliver a more focused experience.

…Not that I’ve ever been in charge of a million-dollar studio. (Nor would I want to be.) But it’s something to consider all the same.

And on a Personal Note

Because several people have asked, yes, I was one of the many SOE employees laid off last week. I was part of the Denver studio where, most recently, I was lead content designer for Magic: the Gathering – Tactics. Yes, I’m looking for a full-time game design position and yes, I’m available for any contract writing or game design assignments you might have coming up. If you think I’d be a good fit for your project, please contact me.

Evil Games?

Famed game designer Jonathan Blow, the brains behind Braid and the upcoming The Witness, raised a few eyebrows this week when he vehemently decried social games as “evil.”

Specifically, he says the games are “exploiting” their players. These games are “trying to take the maximum amount while trying to give the minimum amount” (emphasis added).

Well. Isn’t that the basic nature of any sort of capitalistic endeavor? You want to get back more than you put in; that’s called making a profit, and it’s very popular amongst people who like to both eat and pay their mortgages.

But I don’t think he’s opposed to these basic principles. (He’s not giving Braid away for free, for example.) Rather, I think he’s talking about the the attitude of the games and — more importantly — their designers.

Evil attitude: What can get I get from the players? Then, how much to do I have to give them in order to get it?
Good attitude: What can I give to the players? Then, how much do I have to charge in order to give it to them and still come out ahead?

Motivation is what determines the “morality” of a game. If you make a game to fill your players with joy, fun, and illumination — oh, and to get rich if you can — I think Mr. Blow would stick your game in the “good” bin. But if the profit motive comes first — and it shows in the gameplay — then your masterpiece will end up on “evil” pile.

The key phrase here is, “it shows in the gameplay.”

We cannot tell a game designer’s motivation except by his product.

Hey, designer. What’s your game saying about your motivations?

As a closing side note, I wonder how Mr. Blow feels about traditional coin-op video games? If FarmVille is evil, then Space Invaders must be the devil.

Design and Declarations

Daniel Clark blogged recently on Lostgarden about a proposed “Declaration of Game Designer Independence.”

Go read it. It’s short. And the rest of this post won’t make much sense unless you do.

You’re back? Good. Have a cookie.

Overall, I think the Declaration is a good thing, and following it will lead to better games. I’m a bit dubious about the “…of Independence” part (independent from what? the employers who keep my family fed and pay for my insurance? No thanks.) but I think a certain amount of defensive hyperbole is to be expected from a group of video game designers who’ve seen their work mangled, ignored, rejected, and robbed of all meaning over the past 20 years.

There are eight items in the Declaration.

Three of them are a bold call to action, a demand to raise your game through (3) dedication to mastering design, (4) learning the languages of our related disciplines, and (5) proclaiming your vision for the game to keep it on track. Reading these points makes me want to stand up straight, jut my chin, and swear allegiance to the Grand Nation of Game Designers while the music swells dramatically in the background.

Four of the items are beyond the control of most salaried game designers. Yes, it’s great to believe that (1) game design is the core of every game, and (2) designers are games’ prime movers… but if you’ve been handed a mandate to create a clone of the latest “VilleVille” clicker game for Facebook by next Friday, making certain to include each of the 200 features dictated by the marketing executives… It might be time to put what you believe on the shelf and just get to work. Likewise, you might want to try (6) some new markets or (7) crazy innovative new mechanics, but if it’s not in the budget for this fiscal quarter… Learn to live with disappointment.

Which brings us to the last point of the Declaration, which I’ll quote right here:

(8) We have a choice: Create with our own voices or sell our talents into servitude.

I’d like to think there’s a third choice: Create with our own voices while selling our talents into servitude. Maybe the original vision came from the CEO’s clueless nephew, but once it’s ours, we can still drive it (hopefully away from the cliffs of failure). Maybe we can’t convince management to move into this week’s hot new game space — but we can keep pointing out opportunities for future growth. And maybe there aren’t enough resources for true experimentation, but that shouldn’t keep us from trying to make our own processes efficient enough that we have room to stumble towards breakthroughs.

Even if we aren’t in a position to declare all the declarations, we can still embrace them, and use them to focus our own efforts in the areas we do control.

Salem MMO Weighs Less Than a Duck

What’s this? Hmm…
Salem MMO = Minecraft + Colonial America + Lovecraft + Permadeath.
Okay. You have my attention.
The video interview from PC Gamer has all the details, but there’s a good overview of the project at Worlds in Motion:

Publisher Paradox Interactive announced Salem (tentative title), an upcoming free-to-play MMORPG that will feature Minecraft-like sandbox elements and permanent death for characters, releasing this year.
…As its tentative title suggests, Salem is set in colonial New England, or at least a fictional fantasy version of the region inspired by gothic authors like H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. Gamers will be able to use craft items, help build settlements, and learn magic (witchcraft being one of two primary paths) in Salem’s player-driven world.

Yes, there’s a good chance this might turn into unplayable gank-fest — especially as a F2P game. And it might very well be vapor (it’s due out in the next 12 months, but they’ve got no visuals to show us?). But still the very idea of the game warms the MMO cockles of my heart for all the obvious reasons… and a few others that will be worth their own blog post, maybe later this week.